from the how-is-this-possible? dept

I'll be honest: when I wrote about Chris Roberts being detained by the FBI for tweeting about hacking his flight's WiFi, I reacted with a great big eyeroll. On the one hand, security researchers like Roberts look for these vulnerabilities all the time and it's quite helpful when law enforcement and airlines learn about potential avenues for threats. On the other hand, Chris Roberts is quite obviously not Al Qaeda. The whole thing appeared to be a reaction to embarrassment that the vulnerability had been allowed to exist, rather than any belief that Roberts was in any way a threat.

During two interviews with F.B.I. agents in February and March of this year, Roberts said he hacked the inflight entertainment systems of Boeing and Airbus aircraft, during flights, about 15 to 20 times between 2011 and 2014. In one instance, Roberts told the federal agents he hacked into an airplane’s thrust management computer and momentarily took control of an engine, according to an affidavit attached to the application for a search warrant.

“He stated that he successfully commanded the system he had accessed to issue the ‘CLB’ or climb command. He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” said the affidavit, signed by F.B.I. agent Mike Hurley.

If true, that would go way beyond identifying exploits, mentioning that you could drop the oxygen masks, or really anything else that deals with in-flight wireless hacks. If the affidavit is to be believed, Roberts dangerously manipulated the flight's equipment, potentially putting everyone aboard at risk. We have only the FBI's word for all of this, of course, but the feds are certainly behaving as though Roberts both said all of this and that he's not simply making fictional claims.

Roberts, who has been interviewed at least three times by the F.B.I. this year, is under investigation for allegedly hacking into the electronic entertainment systems of airplanes, according to an application for a search warrant to probe seized electronic equipment. The document shows F.B.I. agents investigating Roberts believe he has the ability to do what he claims: take over flight control systems by hacking the inflight entertainment computer.

“We believe Roberts had the ability and the willingness to use the equipment then with him to access or attempt to access the (inflight entertainment system) and possibly the flight control systems on any aircraft equipped with an (inflight entertainment system) and it would endanger the public safety to allow him to leave the Syracuse airport that evening with that equipment,” sates the warrant application.

“That paragraph that’s in there is one paragraph out of a lot of discussions, so there is context that is obviously missing which obviously I can’t say anything about,” he said. “It would appear from what I’ve seen that the federal guys took one paragraph out of a lot of discussions and a lot of meetings and notes and just chose that one as opposed to plenty of others.”

That still doesn't say he didn't do it, though.

As with too many of these stories, the end result is that we have absolutely nobody to root for. To be fair, Roberts has been warning the airlines and the feds about these exploits for years, without any of it generating much attention. His purported stunt has suddenly brought a little light to what is obviously an untenable security risk, which doesn't in any way excuse manipulating an engine mid-flight. That, plainly, is insane, and I don't think it can be argued that it's an action that deserves punishment. On the other hand, Roberts still isn't Al Qaeda and the end result of all of this may be that planes are safer. Intentions matter, after all.

As for the federal government and the airlines: are you kidding me? You're telling me that not only was all of this possible, which is crazy at the outset, but they had been warned about it and had done nothing? Crazy as it sounds, everyone should be thanking the universe that Chris Roberts was the one manning the keyboard on these flights instead of someone with more nefarious intentions. The feds and the airlines should have simply hired Roberts to battle these vulnerabilities rather than letting it get to this point. Instead, we learn this way that it may indeed be possible to get control of a flight through a plane's WiFi. And we learn that law enforcement and the airline's chief strategy to deal with that fact was to pretend it didn't exist.

from the because-you-can't-reveal-the-airlines'-secrets dept

Nearly two years ago, I wrote up an article on some super scammy airline pricing practices I had discovered in the process of trying to book a multi-city trip. Basically, I found that if you go to a travel search site and try to book the entire multi-city trip as a single trip, it would cost around twice as much more than if you booked the individual legs of the trip separately. In the comments to that post, some more experienced travel experts revealed even more questionable airline pricing practices, and even provided a few more tips on how to get even cheaper fares. These days, more and more sites are popping up to help people sniff out these questionable practices and ways around them. For example, I recently learned about FlightFox, which basically gathers up some expert flight bookers, who know all the tricks, and will help you find cheaper fares (you have to pay them, but if they can save you more than you have to pay them, then it's worth it). While there's some irony in the idea of basically going back to the age of when an "agent" helps you book your flight, it also shows the power of the internet to get around crappy airline pricing practices.

Another such site is Skiplagged -- a site that focuses on finding what's known as "hidden city pricing." This is when you book a flight where the layover city is your real destination, but the flight is still cheaper than if you flew directly to that city. For example, if you wanted to fly from New York to San Francisco, booking a direct flight would be more expensive than booking a flight from New York to Reno -- but which has a layover in San Francisco. So you book the NY to Reno flight and just leave when you get to San Francisco (just make sure you don't check your bags). The site, Skiplagged, has built a clever search engine to sniff out those kinds of deals. I only just heard about it via a post on Boing Boing noting that the 22 year-old entrepreneur who runs the site (as a side project from his day job), Aktarer Zaman, has been sued by United Airlines and Orbitz over the site.

The claim seemed so ridiculous that I did some digging and pulled up the actual lawsuit [pdf], which is well worth reading. Zaman also did an interesting Reddit AMA about a month ago after the suit was served (incorrectly, on his mother). The lawsuit makes a bunch of claims that just seem unlikely to stand up in court -- but there are also a few details left out of all of the press coverage (a few of which may -- slightly -- harm Zaman's case).

The airlines make a really big deal about how "hidden city" traveling breaks "the rules." But, for the most part, the rules in question are for the travelers -- and Zaman didn't agree to them. So, instead, Orbitz and United are going with a "tortious interference with contract" claim, arguing that Zaman is interfering with Orbitz's agreements with airlines. There's also an "unfair competition" claim -- though it's hard to see how that makes any sense at all when all Zaman is doing is accurately showing flight pricing that is available via airlines' own sites and search engines like Orbitz's.

The lawsuit relies heavily on the fact that Zaman signed up for Orbitz's affiliate program, and, in doing so, agreed to abide by Orbitz's terms of service. In response to this, Zaman (in his AMA) notes that he only was exploring the affiliate program and didn't actually use it (in part because it wouldn't work in a way that fit Skiplagged's service). In fact, he posted a screenshot showing a grand total of six (six!) impressions and zero orders via his Orbitz affiliate account:

Some of the claims in the lawsuit are so hyperbolic as to be ridiculous. The claims of problems caused by hidden city ticketing seem greatly exaggerated:

"Hidden city” ticketing also causes irreparable harm to United’s relationships
with prospective customers. Any time a passenger foregoes a leg of travel, the passenger
essentially takes away a seat that could have been sold to a prospective United customer. The
prospective United customer may switch to another airline as a result, especially if his or her
desired flight is full. In such case, United likely would also lose ancillary sales for other
services, such as car rentals and lodging, and a number of disappointed customers may switch
from United for all future travel if United’s flights are consistently “full.” United has no
adequate remedy at law.

Yet, it turns out that people do this all the time. If you look on various travel guru sites, lots of people discuss this trick, and people appear to use it all the time. The "damage" done to airlines seems minimal.

Orbitz also makes some ridiculous claims about how people using Skiplagged and ending up on Orbitz's site for the booking will somehow automatically assume an agreement between the two sites:

To the average internet user of Skiplagged, the transition from the Skiplagged site
to Orbitz’s website is seamless and strongly suggests an affiliation or identity between
Skiplagged and Orbitz that does not exist. Indeed, online travel agencies such as Orbitz enter
into agreements with airlines to use and publish the airlines’ data, all with the prior consent and
cooperation of the airlines and according to financial terms that compensate all parties involved.
By creating a website that operates in much the same manner as an online travel agency, and by
linking that site to Orbitz’s site, Zaman is attempting to confuse and mislead the public into
believing that his website, and the “hidden city” ticketing it employs, is done with the approval
(if not the outright authorization and sponsorship) of Orbitz and the airlines.

That seems like a massive stretch. To the average traveling public, they won't be aware of any such deals and will assume (mostly correctly) that Skiplagged works like any search engine, linking to websites and information on the open internet with no direct agreement with those sites. That's not illegal.

Even more ridiculous is Orbitz's argument that because Zaman uses meta-refresh to get people to the right page for booking, Orbitz's team of engineers can't figure out how to block him. If I were a developer at Orbitz, I'd be insulted by this:

[W]ith the help of a redirector service, Skiplagged redirects users to the
unique Orbitz URL when they select “Book Now.” This redirection process is accomplished
through the use of an antiquated html technique called “meta refresh.” In its most basic form, a
“meta refresh” will automatically refresh the user’s current web page after a specified time
interval. With a few tweaks of the html code, “meta refresh” can also be used to automatically
transfer users to a new page on a different website. This is done by instructing the browser to
fetch a different URL and setting a low refresh time interval. Here, Skiplagged instructs the
user’s browser to refresh automatically to the unique Orbitz URL that Skiplagged’s program has
identified.

When Zaman causes the redirect to Orbitz, he also causes the user’s computer to
initiate a pre-populated search utilizing his algorithm to cause searching on Orbitz’s site that
would not be replicable by the typical user or otherwise through authorized use of the site. Once
on the Orbitz website, because of the Zaman search (conducted without the user’s knowledge)
the user is presented with the exact flight itinerary that was selected on Skiplagged. This is akin
to “deep linking,” which transfers a user to a specific, indexed piece of web content on another
website, rather than the website homepage. Just as with “deep linking,” Zaman uses the “meta
refresh” and related algorithm to seamlessly transfer a user from Skiplagged to Orbitz’s site,
which creates the impression that Skiplagged and Orbitz are partners or one-in-the-same.

To counteract Zaman’s conduct, Orbitz is continuing to investigate ways in which
it may detect customers originating on Skiplagged and prevent the “hidden city” bookings from
being made on the Orbitz site. Nevertheless, Zaman’s repeated variation in redirection strategies
and his use of technical approaches like the “meta refresh” technique have frustrated Orbitz’s
efforts. Injunctive relief will be necessary to ensure that Zaman does not further alter his
software in an effort to circumvent Orbitz’s corrective actions.

This all seems to assume that "deep linking" is illegal. But it's not. And just because this 22-year-old on his side job is able to outwit Orbitz's team of computer programmers doesn't suddenly make what he's doing illegal.

Where it gets slightly trickier for Zaman is in his pre-lawsuit dealings with Orbitz (and possibly United). The lawsuit claims that when approached by Orbitz's lawyers, Zaman agreed to stop linking to Orbitz, but then proceeded to just block Orbitz's IP addresses, so that when people at Orbitz's offices checked it looked like he was blocking Orbitz, but everyone else could get there:

On the same day, Zaman responded to Orbitz Worldwide by email and promised
to “stop redirecting users to Orbitz and partners by end of business week.”

Zaman, however, did not stop redirecting Skiplagged users to Orbitz, but instead
has blocked Orbitz IP addresses from accessing the Skiplagged website. Starting on or around
October 2, 2014, when Orbitz personnel attempted to perform a search on Skiplagged, they
received an error message that read “Sorry for the inconvenience, but Skiplagged is unable to
process your booking request.” Zaman, in other words, was trying to hide his improper conduct
from Orbitz, so that he could go on redirecting Skiplagged users to Orbitz’s site, without Orbitz’s
permission or knowledge. Orbitz believed and relied upon Zaman’s promises and believed for a
time that Zaman was complying with his promises based on several tests from Orbitz computers
that seemed to show that Zaman had complied with his promises. As such, Orbitz initially
refrained from bringing this lawsuit.

It's possible that his email telling Orbitz that he would remove it, and then his failure to do so (along with just blocking Orbitz's own IPs) could lead to at least some trouble in the form of promissory estoppel.

Separately, Zaman and United's lawyers had a conversation where Zaman agreed to "remove all United references" on Skiplagged. And here he got creative. Whenever a United flight showed up, he wrote "censored" and had a notification that said "Sorry for the inconvenience, but United Airlines says we can't show you this information."

In this case, depending on what was actually said, it's unclear if this would reach the same "promissory estoppel" level that the email to Orbitz might reach -- though he did send United an email saying "United is removed from our services." It could be argued whether or not that's accurate.

On the whole, the lawsuit really is ridiculous. Suing this guy for showing accurate information about flight prices seems tremendously questionable. However, the situation is complicated somewhat by Zaman's promises to both companies. No matter what, it's well known that airlines play really obnoxious fare-pricing games, and Zaman was trying to shed some light on it with a simple side project. And, really, if your entire business can supposedly be undermined by a 22-year-old kid in his spare time accurately showing the prices of various flights, perhaps the real problem is with your business model, and not with the kid.

from the because-that's-what-the-FAA-does dept

Hot off of doing its best to kill off any commercial use of drones, the FAA is now looking to ground some attempts at building ride sharing for amateur pilots. While plenty of people are referring to AirPooler as an "Uber for airplanes," it's not really like that. Here, the idea is that if you're a pilot flying somewhere, you can post your plans and if someone was looking to travel that route, they can hop on board and pay some of the fuel costs. The end result basically benefits everyone. The pilot has lower costs, the traveler gets a cheap flight and everyone's better off. This kind of thing happened informally all the time in the past, usually by word of mouth and bulletin boards. Airpooler is just formalizing the process.

But the FAA... doesn't like it. It claims that any offsetting of the pilots costs makes it a commercial endeavor and that violates the FAA's rules on private (non-commercial) pilots.

Private pilots as a general rule may not act as pilot in command of an aircraft that is carrying passengers or property for compensation or hire nor, for compensation or hire, may they acts as pilot in command of an aircraft.

Now, there is an exception to that rule if the passengers are paying a pro rata share of the expenses of the flight. So this shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. The reasoning here is about as opaque as a foggy morning in San Francisco. The FAA repeats that there's an exception for expense sharing, but then argues that AirPooler can't rely on this exception.

As such, although § 61.113(c) contains an expense-sharing exception to the general prohibition against private pilots acting as pilot in command for compensation or hire, a private pilot may not rely on that narrow exception to avoid the compensation component of common carriage. For this reason, the FAA has required a private pilot to have a common purpose with his or her passengers and must have his or her own reason for travelling to the destination.

Likewise, although airline transport pilots and commercial pilots may as as pilot in command on an aircraft carrying passengers for compensation or hire, they may not conduct a commercial operation involving common carriage without obtaining a part 119 certificate. You have urged that the test for compensation in commercial operations is "the major enterprise for profit" test set forth in the definition of commercial operator. Specifically, you state that a pilot would not be engaged in a major enterprise for profit "if accepting only the cost reimbursements allowed under § 61.113."

Based on the fact that the FAA views expense-sharing as compensation for which an exception is necessary for private pilots, the issue of compensation is not in doubt.

Therefore, the "major enterprise for profit" test in § 1.1 is wholly inapplicable. Accordingly, we conclude that, with regard to pilots using the AirPooler website, all four elements of common carriage are present. By posting specific flights to the AirPooler website, a pilot participating in the AirPooler serve would be holding out to transport persons or property from place to place for compensation or hire. Although the pilots participating in the AirPooler website have chosen the destination, they are holding out to the public to transport passengers for compensation in the form of a reduction of the operating expenses they would have paid for the flight. This position is fully consistent with prior legal interpretations related to other nationwide initiatives involving expense-sharing flights.

Got it? I've read it over half a dozen times and I'm still confused. There's an exception that says that a passenger can pay their share of the expenses and it doesn't make it a commercial flight, but... that doesn't apply here because it's compensation, as clearly determined by the fact that there's an exception for this kind of compensation. Say what?

AirPooler apparently plans to ask the FAA "to elaborate" though the FAA's historical approach to almost any innovation seems to be "well, let's wait and not really make a decision for as long as is humanly possible." End result: significantly less innovation, not just from the likes of AirPooler, but all of the entrepreneurs who won't even try to build startups in the space.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Malaysian flight MH370 remains a mystery (for now?), but technology that could have answered a lot of questions actually exists -- it just wasn't aboard MH370. There are black boxes that can eject with parachutes and be more easily recovered. Various aircraft monitoring systems and engine monitoring systems can send maintenance signals to satellites, providing significant help to investigators if problems during a flight occur. Despite all these technological advances, it's still pretty easy to get lost in the oceans. Here are just a few links on finding things on the open sea.

from the because-you-gotta-blame-someone dept

You may have seen this story making the rounds about a 9-year-old boy somehow getting through multiple layers of security at an airport in Minnesota to get aboard a flight to Las Vegas. It appears that there were multiple lapses here. The kid got through the TSA security checkpoint without a ticket. He got onto the plane without a ticket. The plane then took off without anyone noticing that (1) the plane had too many passengers and (2) he wasn't on their list of unaccompanied minors (something they noticed mid-flight). The TSA's response was initially to blame the the government shutdown:

WCCO contacted the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) Sunday morning, during which a spokesperson said staffing is currently low due to the number of employees furloughed in the wake of the federal government shutdown.

A few hours later, the TSA responded again, trying a different strategy. Apparently someone realized that nearly all TSA agents at security checks are still on the job, even if their pay is deferred. So, with a second shot at this, rather than blame the government shutdown, the TSA's strategy is to claim it did everything it was supposed to:

“The child was screened along with all other passengers to ensure that he was not a threat to the aircraft,” said the TSA spokesperson.

Someone else in the article also notes that the TSA's job is to make sure that the people passing through security are "not a threat," and not whether or not they're supposed to board the plane. That's an interesting argument, but doesn't make much sense. I fly fairly frequently, and these days every single time I fly there are two TSA agents who review the boarding pass before you make it through security (one as you enter security who mainly makes sure you have a boarding pass for a flight through that security checkpoint, and the second who checks your IDs and is supposed to verify that the boarding pass is legit).

Of course, these kinds of lapses aren't unheard of. In the past it used to be much easier. Comedian/actor Molly Shannon has told her story a few times about how when she was a little girl she was able to sneak onto a plane to NY (after her father suggested she try it). But that was back when airport/airline security was a lot lower. Either way, it's pretty ridiculous for the TSA to blame the government shutdown for such a lapse. People have long argued that the TSA is more "security theater" than anything else -- giving you the appearance of security, rather than any actual protections -- and this seems to support that theory.

from the customer-service! dept

Ah, yet another customer service debacle. Mark Leiser, a law lecturer and columnist, tweeted a slightly negative tweet about low-cost European airline EasyJet after his flight was delayed, and EasyJet customer service was somewhat rude in response (basically telling him and others that if they missed connections, that was their own problem, not EasyJet's).

Flight delayed 90min. Soldier going to miss last connection & @easyjet refusing to help pay for him to get to Portsmouth. Get right into em!

“I put out a tweet about it and then when I got in the queue, and a member of staff approached me and asked if she could have a quick word," Leiser explained. "She said she understood I’d said something on social media about easyJet and then told me they were not allowing me to board the flight.

“I said you’re kidding me; I asked where that had come from and she told me I should know I’m not allowed to do that. I was stunned. I told her I didn’t really understand what she was telling me and she said: ‘You’re not allowed to talk about easyJet like that and then expect to get on a flight’.”

“She then asked me to step out of the queue and repeated that she was not letting me on the flight. I told her she’d better get somebody down to discuss this and she told me the manager was on his way to speak to me. Then she told said she couldn’t believe I thought what I’d done was appropriate. I was just sitting there in disbelief.

“So the the manager arrived and told me that based on my tweet they couldn’t let me board the flight because I wasn’t allowed to do that and I should know better....

Leiser eventually brought up the concept of free speech (which doesn't technically apply here, as it wouldn't have been the government stopping him from speaking, and EasyJet, as a private company, can choose not to allow anyone on their planes, no matter how stupid the reason). That seemed to spook the apparently clueless EasyJet employees, who asked if he was a lawyer. Once he told them he taught law, they thought about it and eventually let him on the plane.

Now, once again, EasyJet certainly can choose not to do business with anyone they choose. However, if they decide to do it for monumentally stupid reasons like they don't like the tweet that someone sent out, then they have to deal with the consequences of that, such as being called out for it, and widely mocked for being ridiculous.

The company, for its part, appears to be in something of denial about what happened, issuing the following statement:

EasyJet has never denied boarding due to comments on social media. On the rare occasion that we consider denying boarding it is on the basis of disruptive behaviour.

While technically this might be true (they eventually let him board), it certainly appears they were about to not let him board because of social media. The airline would have been better off admitting that some staff members got a little power hungry after their colleagues were criticized for being uncaring, and that it would review its training and policies on these things.

from the well-look-at-that dept

It's no secret that almost no one who isn't employed by an airline really understands airline pricing, but in playing around with some flight search/booking tools, I recently came across something interesting, suggesting that if you're doing multi-city tours, it may pay to not let a flight search tool know that. I have a bit of travel coming up in the near future that's going to involve a bunch of stops. While I was booking the flights, I noticed some oddities. In pre-planning the trip, I had done some spot checks on pricing for flights between various cities -- plugging them into Expedia to see what came up, just to get a sense of what the cost would be. However, when it came time to book, I did one big "multi-city" list of flights, and was surprised that what came back seemed significantly more expensive than what my mental estimate had been from the spot check. So I went back, and looked what would happen if I booked each leg individually... and the prices went way down -- back to what I had seen with the spot checks. Hmm. In the end, if I had booked the multi-city flights for the exact same flights it would have been more than double the cost than if I booked the flights individually (which I did).

I decided to mess around and see if this was true in other situations and on other travel search engines. Because I really don't feel like broadcasting my travel plans/flight times/flight dates/destinations to the world, I tried it again with a made up itinerary, which I used to demonstrate the situation below. I did all of the searches within minutes of each other and went back and redid a few of the searches to make sure that my own searches weren't somehow influencing the pricing (they didn't -- if I went back and did the same searches, I still got the same prices). I will say that on my actual flights, the multi-city price was even higher and the individual flight costs were even lower than with this example that I show, so the spread was even bigger than seen here, though this example still gives a decent spread. First up, here's my example "multi-city" itinerary as per Expedia:

As you can see, three flights, total price: $2,891. Okay, now find the exact same flights on the exact same day and time, but do the searches individually. Here are the results:

Same exact flights. But the individual prices are $494, $723 and $477. That adds up to $1,694. Still kinda pricey for three flights, but well, well, well below $2,891. For the exact same flights. Yes, Expedia might show all of your flights in a single page itinerary on the website, but is that really worth $1,197? Seems doubtful. I mentioned this on Twitter, and someone suggested that the "risk" of booking individually is that they don't know if you're going to miss a connection, which does make sense on flights that are connecting flights. But none of these are. They're all different flights on different airlines on different days.

I was curious if other search engines would show the same thing. First up, was Expedia's main competitor in being the "big legacy" player, Travelocity. I haven't used that site in years, and discovered that their interface is incredibly annoying (it also seems to be one of the only flight search engines I can find that doesn't try to autofill airports as you type). Rather than showing the full package upfront, Travelocity makes me pick each flight, so I did -- and picked the exact same flights:

Now, here's our first clue into what's going on. Even though I very clearly had the box checked for only "coach/economy" seats, Travelocity put me in business class on that last flight. There was no option to change that at all, and other combinations more or less turned up the same thing. I have no idea why they did this, but the overall price was just a few dollars more than Expedia:

Also, in case you're curious, when I just did the single flight search for that final leg, Travelocity doesn't say it needs to be a business class ticket. Instead, it shows a coach ticket with a price not too far off from the Expedia price:

I have no idea why Travelocity sneaks in that business class seat (and it's not clear if that's what Expedia is doing too, though I suspect it may be). Then I decided to move on and test some of the next generation of flight search/booking sites, starting with Hipmunk, which I really like. The end result... about the same, though a tad more expensive.

Now, on this one there are two other things to discuss. First, while it's not clear from the way it's shown here, that first flight is not a coach seat either. The only options presented by Hipmunk were "premium economy" on SAS flights or business class on Brussels Air, even though if you search individually, there are coach seats available. Hmmm. So that's the second search engine that throws in a semi-hidden (you can only see it on mouseover) upgraded seat, which probably contributes to the massive price jump (though on Hipmunk it's the first flight, as opposed to the last one on Travelocity).

The other thing you might notice is that the final flight on Hipmunk is actually not the same. That's because, when doing the multicity search, Hipmunk doesn't even show that 8pm flight. You can see it if I expand out and it shows the final leg options.

With the multi-city search, Hipmunk only shows those two morning flights. I still chose the Iberia flight, since I was trying to keep it somewhat consistent with the other searches. If I had made a few different selections, I could have decreased the total by a bit, but not by that much. Oh, and it's not like Hipmunk can't find that 8pm flight. Do a single search, rather than multi-city and, boom, there it is:

Someone on Twitter suggested trying Kayak, and that turned up something interesting and different!

Hey, look! That first package looks an awful lot like the individual pricing that I found on Expedia. And note the little "Hacker Fare" note. If you mouseover, they explain that to get that rate, you may have to buy flights separately. Hmm. A Kayak blog post notes that such "hacker fares" are usually about finding better two "one-way" flights for a roundtrip. Except that's not what's happening here, since none of these are round trips. They're all the same flights. Except... actually, with Kayak... they're not. These aren't the same flights. One of the criteria I had used above was that I was seeking out non-stop flights, and to get the cheap fares via Kayak, you had to take one or two "1 stop" flights. In the side bar, there are check boxes for things like that, and so I "forced" it to only look for nonstop flights... and Kayak told me no such flights existed.

That seems odd. All the other search engines could find three nonstop flights. For what it's worth, I also checked Orbitz, and Orbitz actually had an even better deal, getting the price all the way down to $1,227.29 -- lower even than my individual flights, but there are caveats. All three of the flights involve layovers, and the final one is an overnight layover, so if timing is important, that might not work.

Oddly, Orbitz basically doesn't show any non-stop options until you get to the second page of results. If you just looked at the first page, you might be led to believe that there aren't even direct flights between these cities at all. Also, as far as I can tell, Orbitz, like Kayak, absolutely refuses to offer any way to take all three flights as non-stop, despite the fact that they clearly exist.

After going through all of this, I reached out to folks at Hipmunk, to see if they could explain the result. Hipmunk's Adam Goldstein kindly explained the basic situation, noting that airlines have all sorts of rules about what tickets can be combined with others. If you've never dealt with the insane details of fare classes (which go way beyond seating classes), you can spend way too much time online reading the crazy details. Given that, it seems that it is these kinds of "fare classes" that are the "culprit" -- and by "culprit" I mean the way in which the airlines force you into spending much, much, much more than you need to.

That said, Goldstein also argues that there are downsides to buying individual flights. He brings up, as we discussed above, the issue of connecting flights (and also having bags checked all the way through to destination) -- but as noted, that doesn't apply in this situation. He also points out that if you have to "change or cancel your whole trip, you have to pay separate change/cancel fees for each booking, instead of one for the whole thing." That's absolutely true, but is that "insurance" worth paying twice as much? I could rebook my entire trip with different times and dates... and basically pay the same total amount. So... that argument doesn't make much sense.

In the end, it really feels like a scammy way of making fliers pay a lot more than they need to, without them realizing it. What I do know, however, is that if you're looking for the best deals, do not assume that a multi-city search will turn up the cheapest prices -- and also recognize that the different search engines can give out extremely different answers. For example, if price was the only concern, and short flight times/non-stop flights were less important, then obviously that British Airways option at the end is by far the best price -- but it turns up on none of the other search engines. However, I'd imagine that most casual fliers have no idea, and I wonder if many people end up booking multi-city flight options, not realizing that they could save a ton by booking the exact same flights individually.

from the not-how-you-attract-customers dept

This one is from a few weeks back, but it's worth catching up on. In an age when pretty much everyone has a camera in their pocket via their telephone, it's fairly crazy to try to enforce "no photography" rules -- especially in places where they don't make any sense. And, yet, for reasons that are not at all clear, United Airlines apparently has the following "no photography" rule for passengers on their airplanes:

But, of course, who would actually pay attention to something like that? Tons of people take photographs on airplanes. I've done it plenty of times. Yet, on one United flight a few weeks ago, apparently a flight attendant was being extra vigilant and running around the airplane demanding everyone stop taking photographs, even falsely claiming that it violated FAA regulations (it doesn't). One of admonished passengers was a travel writer and a frequent United Airlines flyer, Matthew Klint, who blogs regularly (and positively) about the airline. He took the following photo:

The reason was that this was the first time he'd been on a plane with this configuration, and he intended to blog about it, as he's done many times in the past. The flight attendant ordered him to stop, and he did so immediately. But then he decided to just let the flight attendant know why he had taken the picture, and that led to a ridiculous chain of events ending with him getting tossed off the flight.

Naturally, the FA's warning bothered me and I felt the need to explain myself. I signaled for her to come back and asked her to hang my coat. I then said this verbatim—

"I want you to understand why I was taking pictures. I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist. Here is my business card [offering her one]. I write about United Airlines on an almost-daily basis and the folks at United in Chicago are even aware of my blog."

She took my jacket but refused to take my business card saying, "No, that's okay," then saying, "I did not know that" after I explained my reason for taking pictures. I again emphasize, I took no more pictures.

Just a few minutes later, he was told that the captain was ordering him off the plane. Klint eventually was able to speak to the captain who insisted that he had disobeyed the flight attendant, when he makes it clear he had not. It became a he-said/she-said debate and the airline, of course, won.

After the story started to get some attention, United reached out to Klint and claimed they were launching an "extensive internal investigation."

Klint is, quite reasonably, pissed off about the flight attendant lying about his actions. And he feels United needs to earn back his trust (and he notes they have not offered any sort of apology). However, it seems the bigger issue is the whole "no photography" rule. It's likely this was a rule that's supposed to protect the "privacy" of fellow passengers, but it's clearly one that was being misapplied by this flight attendant, who apparently stopped quite a few people from taking such pictures.

Yet, in an age where everyone has a cameraphone, the idea of stopping photographs in a settling like that isn't just silly, it's counterproductive and can be used (as in this case) to escalate a perfectly benign situation into a complete mess.

from the about-time dept

It's been pretty clear for quite some time that there's no real safety reason why electronics are barred during takeoff and landing on airplanes. Furthermore, there's no legitimate technological reason for not allowing mobile phones on planes either -- that one's more just about keeping other passengers from going into a rage at having to hear others' half-conversations. However, it seems that more and more people are getting annoyed that they can't use their snazzy new ebooks or tablet computers (not just iPads, mind you) on airplane take-off and landings. Nick Bilton, over at the NY Times, asked the FAA what was up with that, and they admitted that they're taking "a fresh look" at those devices and whether or not they should be allowed to be used at those times. Of course, as he notes, this might just lead to a bunch of bureaucratic red tape -- including every possible device having to go through significant testing:

Abby Lunardini, vice president of corporate communications at Virgin America, explained that the current guidelines require that an airline must test each version of a single device before it can be approved by the F.A.A. For example, if the airline wanted to get approval for the iPad, it would have to test the first iPad, iPad 2 and the new iPad, each on a separate flight, with no passengers on the plane.

It would have to do the same for every version of the Kindle. It would have to do it for every different model of plane in its fleet. And American, JetBlue, United, Air Wisconsin, etc., would have to do the same thing. (No wonder the F.A.A. is keeping smartphones off the table since there are easily several hundred different models on the market.)

Ms. Lunardini added that Virgin America would like to perform these tests, but the current guidelines make it “prohibitively expensive, especially for an airline with a relatively small fleet that is always in the air on commercial flights like ours.”

But, hopefully, a better, more efficient process can be found, and people will actually be able to use these devices on airplanes that aren't just over 10,000 feet...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There doesn't seem to be a "Black Friday" for getting good deals on booking flights. Maybe there is a single day of the year to buy really discounted plane tickets -- if you know what day that is, please let everyone know in the comments. But technically, it probably takes more than a single day of ticket sales for the airline industry to get into the black for the year. In any case, here are some more stories about airlines and how they treat their customers.